At this years Global Game Jam I had the opportunity to try out the Oculus Rift DK2 (development kit version 2). I had tested out the original Oculus dev kit last year, and while the experience was striking, a few minutes was about my limit. 

At this years global game jam I did something I haven’t done in way, way too long. I animated. Sure I only animated a hand, and sure it really wasn’t very detailed, nuanced, or “good”, but when you only have a couple days to create an entire game, you do what you can. 

The following video is a full play through of this years Global Game Jam entry SpaceShip SuperStar Maintenance Ltd. created by Evan Kawa, Christine Howell, and myself. You can download and play the game here. This video contains spoilers. You have been warned.

Years ago I heard Jim Zubkavich posit a theory he called The Wheel of Crap. The Wheel of Crap states that any media has two opposing potentials, Great, and Crap. Great sits at the top of the wheel, Crap sits at the bottom, and the two states form a continuum. 

I was thinking about some old games the other day, as I do. I was remembering Fighting Vipers, and it’s sequel Fighting Vipers 2. These are some games that were never very popular, overshadowed by the far more successful Virtual Fighter series created alongside Fighting Vipers by Sega’s AM2 arcade development division. Virtua Fighter is a precision tuned fighting game, built to go head to head with the Street Fighters and Tekkens of the genre. This a genre that contains as a staple, mystical martial arts experts that throw fire from their hands, so weird is relative. Whatever you might think of Virtua Fighter though, it’s, odd duck, little brother Fighting Vipers, is weird. And weird games are great.

Sometime around the age of 4, I asked everyone to call me Starbuck. I’m sure I demanded it. The character Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica was cool. He talked cool, flew a cool spaceship, fought cool robots and aliens with his cool friends. I wasn’t cool. I was 4. I must have figured that if I had the cool name of a cool guy, I too would be cool. 

Best Games - Black Tiger There was a carousel of arcade machines that rolled through the 7-Eleven just down the street from my high school. A regular noon hour activity was to head down to the ‘sev’ and get in line early enough to take your shot at one of the machines. The games would get changed out every few weeks, unless it was a particularly lucrative game like Street Fighter 2 : Champion Edition. That cabinet sat in the same spot for so long, a crime scene forensics team could probably still detect its presence.

“Games are a journey, and should be covered like travel journalism.” One of the finest descriptions of games writing I have ever read was that line from Heather Anne Campbell.

So I wrote a couple weeks back that I was having trouble with my Huion graphics tablet. I had threatened that I would rebuild the whole pc, reinstall windows if I had to, to get my tools working again. I made good on that threat. 

This is going to seem like some impressively pretentious nonsense. It’s going to seem like semantic garbage. It might even be those things. I think that the way most people typically view art is wrong, and I hope this can clarify some things.

I’m using video games to get in better shape. Well I’m not actually playing the games. I’ve been watching other people play games. So far it seems to be working. 

So, I’ve been trying to get my Huion graphics tablet to work properly on my main PC for a couple of days now. It works fine on the laptop, and presumably, would work properly on any other computer I hooked it up to. The pen tracks without glitches or stutters, but there is no pressure sensitivity. What is more baffling is that I had been using it only a few days ago, and it was working normally. 

Best Games - DoDonPachi speeding wings of light screaming flurry of bullets stillness equals death

That’s good game design! I was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the widely spread phosphors of a cheap 20 inch color TV. My friend had recently moved his bedroom from the the highest point in his parents aging, but immaculate farm house, to the cool dry of the basement. It’s the move all teenage boys are eager to make. The yearning for the cave lifestyle must be deep in our cellular makeup. He could have stopped there and I would have still thought this new abode lined with Iron Maiden and ACDC emblems, was comfortably epic. He went one further, and picked up an old TV from a relative and bought a brand new SEGA Genesis.

Last year my sons said that they wanted to go as zombies for halloween, but not the regular raggy clothes and dark makeup around the eyes type zombies, Minecraft zombies. Minecraft zombies are nondescript, brown and green boxes with arms and legs. A full body costume consisting mostly of unbendable boxes that I knew they would find to uncomfortable to wear wasn’t going to happen. I managed to talk them down to a set of diamond Minecraft armor. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to accomplish that. Cardboard boxes, cloth attached to a dowel structure. Cardboard would never hold up to how my kids were going to abuse these costumes. I know how to sew, but not competently enough for nice looking costumes. I eventually opted for foam mats and this was the result.